What is anti-folk?
The music sub genre known as anti-folk (or antifolk) takes the earnestness of politically charged 1960s music and subverts it into something else. Although it is still highly debated exactly what the defining characteristics are, which vary from one artist to the next, it is fairly accepted that the music tends to sound raw or experimental, and generally mocks the seriousness and pretension of the established mainstream music scene and also mocks itself.
Hazily defined genre originally inhabited by young white tenement squatters who combined folk and punk sensibilities, but more recently embodied by LO-FI pretend rustics Will Oldham and Bill Callahan, who under their aliases (Palace and Bonnie “Prince” Billy for Oldham, Smog for Callahan), thrum acoustic guitars and warble ominous murder-ballad lyrics in the style of the authentic twenties hayseeds heard on Harry Smith’s ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC. The anti-folk movement (which took it’s name from English acousti-punk Billy Bragg’s description of his own sound) traces its origins to a scroungy eighties Lower East Side scene that spawned, among others, Beck, Michelle Shocked, Cindy Lee Berryhill, and Ani DiFranco.
